While discussing their time covering the Iraq War, James (Brandon Sean Pearson) tries to connect with Sarah (Jennifer Ruckman) but is hurt to learn that she didn't just have an affair with their Iraqi interpreter but was also in love with him.DOUG CATILLER, TRUE IMAGE STUDIO

While many a tale has focused on the brave men and women of the U.S. military or those sent to provide foreign aid, few have taken a look at those who document their exploits – the reporters and photojournalists who, embedded or not, bring gripping images and written accounts to the home front.

For some, “Time Stands Still” may sound and feel like playwright Donald Margulies blended themes, character traits and relationships from movies as diverse as “Under Fire,” “Rear Window,” “Home of the Brave,” “The Killing Fields,” “Manhattan” and “Coming Home,” as well as many earlier flicks about wartime correspondents.

Look closer, though, and you’ll find much that resonates with many an earlier Margulies play, and with the same kind of tension and rich character interaction. Those qualities are on full display in Marya Mazor’s often stunning staging of the 2009 play’s Orange County premiere at Chance Theater.

“Time” gives us three old hands at the business of covering war, famine, genocide and squalor – Sarah (Jennifer Ruckman), a tough-minded photojournalist; James (Brandon Sean Pearson), a freelance reporter and Sarah’s boyfriend for nearly a decade; and Richard (Mike Martin), a newsmagazine editor who often sends both trotting the globe in search of searing stories and images.

After having nearly been killed by a roadside bomb in Mosul, Iraq, Sarah has just returned home to her and James’ loft in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. The second, interwoven story thread of “Time” involves Richard’s new romance with the vivacious, chatty, life-affirming Mandy (Elena Murray). Half Richard’s age, she’s clearly a sweet, sincere, goodhearted young lady. She’s also almost laughably blunt and naïve regarding geopolitics and the nature of hard news journalism.

Margulies clearly aims to disabuse us of the notion that globetrotting journalists’ lives are glamorous and exciting. More likely, he observes, they see their work as a high moral calling, are afraid of a life of normalcy, or are simply adrenaline junkies. “Time” also gives us full doses of the grit, and the high-stakes personal toll, living such a life can have.

At the crux of “Time” is how Sarah’s near-death experience has effected her and James, as a couple and individually. What both playwright and director show is that the factors that have motivated Sarah to want to return to the fray are the same ones that have pushed James in the opposite direction. As focal is the romance that developed between Sarah and her Iraqi “fixer” (local contact) after James suffered a nervous breakdown and had to return home.

As in other Margulies plays, the characters of “Time” wrestle with big-picture issues and questions. Most crucial is whether hardcore journalists like James and Sarah are even capable of having what they call a “normal” existence free of the random violence and upheaval their careers depend upon.

Mazor exploits the tension and strained relations between people who have allowed their professional and personal lives to commingle, and her splendid cast members realize the Tony Award-nominated play’s full potential.

Ruckman embodies Sarah’s jaded persona and stubborn self-sufficiency from the inside out, painting a hard-bitten observer of conflict who has lost the capacity for joy. Most moving is Ruckman’s choked-up shame as Sarah calls herself “a ghoul with a camera” and “a fraud” who “live(s) off the suffering of strangers.”

The tall, thin, pale, bespectacled Pearson presents James as a glib intellectual never at a loss for words and, privately, a sensitive soul who craves domesticity. Pearson also delivers James’ sarcasm and the bitterness he often feels toward Sarah for needing her work more than she needs him.

Without resorting to cliché, Martin uses a gravelly voice and gruff manner to carry what is the play’s most elusive role, balancing the delight Richard feels being around Mandy with Richard’s contortions as he tries simultaneously to be James’ closest friend and his boss.

Murray’s wide-eyed exclamations and Valley Girl inflections aptly paint Mandy as an intellectual lightweight in way over her head. While Mandy’s foot-in-mouth statements trigger unreserved laughter from us, Margulies also shows that Mandy is well aware of how she’s perceived by Richard’s two oldest friends.

During key moments of the play – as when Sarah relives the carnage of an Iraqi village being bombed – Ryan Brodkin uses the sound of a heartbeat racing with excitement and fear. It’s a subtle effect that makes an already powerfully subjective play even more so.

While discussing their time covering the Iraq War, James (Brandon Sean Pearson) tries to connect with Sarah (Jennifer Ruckman) but is hurt to learn that she didn't just have an affair with their Iraqi interpreter but was also in love with him. DOUG CATILLER, TRUE IMAGE STUDIO
In "Time Stands Still," Jennifer Ruckman portrays Sarah, a photojournalist who returns home to Brooklyn, New York City, after being severely injured by a roadside bomb while covering the Iraq War. Chance Theater stages the Orange County premiere of Donald Margulies' 2009 drama. DOUG CATILLER, TRUE IMAGE STUDIO
James (Brandon Sean Pearson), a veteran freelance news reporter, comforts his longtime girlfriend Sarah (Jennifer Ruckman) while feeling guilt for not having been in Iraq when she was injured and nearly killed. DOUG CATILLER, TRUE IMAGE STUDIO
News magazine editor Richard (Mike Martin), Sarah and James' oldest friend and colleague, visits the couple and introduces them to his new girlfriend Mandy (Elena Murray), who is half his age and astonishingly out of touch with the grave nature of the three veteran journalists' careers. DOUG CATILLER, TRUE IMAGE STUDIO
Sarah (Jennifer Ruckman) and James (Brandon Sean Pearson, right) discuss future photography and reporting assignments with Richard (Mike Martin), an editor at a prominent national news magazine. DOUG CATILLER, TRUE IMAGE STUDIO
James (Brandon Sean Pearson) tells Sarah (Jennifer Ruckman) he envies the fact that Richard and Mandy are planning to marry - and insists that after their nine-year relationship, he and Sarah also tie the knot. DOUG CATILLER, TRUE IMAGE STU
In Act II of "Time Stands Still," Richard (Mike Martin) and Mandy (Elena Murray), now several months pregnant, return to Sarah and James' Brooklyn loft after attending the couples' wedding earlier that day. DOUG CATILLER, TRUE IMAGE STUDIO
In the play's waning moments, Sarah (Jennifer Ruckman) looks through her camera viewfinder, the device she says causes time to "stop." The Donald Margulies drama "Time Stands Still" plays in Anaheim Hills through Oct. 27. DOUG CATILLER, TRUE IMAGE STUDIO

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